Sonny Vu

Sonny is Founder of Alabaster, a company that advises and invests in founders commercializing technology based on scientific breakthroughs. Current themes include materials science, semiconductors, and synthetic biology for clean energy and food production. Recently, Sonny was President/CTO of Fossil Group, Connected Devices. Before that, he founded: Elemental Machines (IoT for complex processes), Misfit (acquired by Fossil Group for $260m), AgaMatrix (biosensors for diabetes), FireSpout (NLP; acquired by Ask Jeeves). Before startups, he worked at Microsoft Research in NLP under Kai-Fu Lee, worked on a Linguistics PhD at MIT under Noam Chomsky, and studied math at UIUC.

SynBioBeta is the leading community of entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers and enthusiasts devoted to the responsible growth of the synthetic biology field. We’re dedicated to telling the stories of the field and companies involved, building their networks, and helping them grow.